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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup simmered with onions, spices, and brown wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beef and water. Boil for one hour.

  2. In a separate pan, fry the sliced onions in butter until light brown.

  3. Add the fried onions, cloves, black pepper, mace, allspice, essence of celery, curry or marjoram, and Worcestershire sauce to the pot.

  4. Stew for two more hours, or until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and return it to the heat. Season with salt.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the brown sherry or Madeira wine.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat and, as it stews, savory flavor and tender texture.
Onions
Fried until light brown in butter, they add sweetness and deep savory flavor to the broth.
Butter
Fat used to fry the onions, carrying flavor and aiding browning.
Brown sherry or madeira wine
Added at the end to contribute aroma and a fortified, slightly sweet depth.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until light brown. Browning onions in butter develops sweet, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Pale or burnt onions noticeably change the broth's color and taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, butter, clove, pepper, allspice, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, butter, clove, pepper, allspice, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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